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A Westford, Massachusetts-based IP communications infrastructure company announced today that it’s finished testing a solution that’s expected to help cable providers migrate their triple play services to the next generation more quickly.

 

Officials at Sonus Networks (News - Alert) say their PacketCable 2.0 products have undergone interoperability testing with Camiant, Inc., a policy control and application assurance company based in nearby Marlborough that deals with modern IP broadband network operators.

 

According to Sonus’ vice president of cable and wireline solutions, Michael Rubin, offering PacketCable 2.0 is a natural evolution for the historically aggressive cable industry, which started by deploying high-speed Internet and then triple play services.

 

“Camiant (News - Alert) is an established leader in policy control and Sonus recognized the importance of partnering with Camiant so that cable providers can integrate multiple services seamlessly,” Rubin said. “To win subscribers in this competitive market, the cable industry needs to have the tools to innovate successfully and deliver the demands of today’s customers, while investing in and wisely managing their networks for tomorrow.”

 

Specifically, the companies say, the integrated solution will bring cable customers a higher quality of service, where voice communications are not disrupted by the demands of other high-bandwidth services such as file transfers, IPTV or video sharing.

 

Recent market data indicates that the new solution could fare well.

 

According to Broadband Trends, more than 13 million U.S. households received their telephone service from a cable operator at the end of 2007, a 68 percent increase from 2006.

 

“As many of these subscribers already have both Internet and TV, policy management to ensure that each service is delivered without interruption is a critical part of existing and future deployments of voice and video services,” Sonus officials say. “Now, cable providers are turning to the IP Multimedia System to offer multi-media services that include video and mobile devices.”

 

Company officials say Camiant’s testing included: Sonus ASX Call Server for residential and business telephony services supporting DQOS and 3GPP compliant ISC interface; Sonus SRX providing the industries most advanced platform for the 3GPP Call / Session Control Function with 3GPP and PacketCable compliant Rx interface; Sonus NBS (News - Alert) providing advanced security and media control in conjunction with a 3GPP compliant P-CSCF and the IMS Border elements; and Sonus IMX providing a PacketCable compliant service development platform that allows operators to create PacketCable Multimedia compliant enabled applications that combine the power of SIP, Web 2.0 with enablers such as presence and messaging.

 

According to Susie Riley, chief technical officer and founder of Camiant, a provider’s superior policy management solution naturally leads to a better experience for subscribers.

 

“As MSOs add new services and migrate to IMS, policy becomes even more important, as the number of services offered through the same pipe increases,” Riley said. “Our partnership with Sonus means that our cable customers can seamlessly leverage their existing deployments of Camiant’s policy server with Sonus’ PacketCable 2.0 infrastructure to move forward confidently with next-generation voice and multimedia deployments today.”